In a liquid crystal display device in a mode of electrically controlled birefringence (ECB) or the like, liquid crystal molecules are undesirably influenced by a lateral electric field due to a relationship between the polarities of adjacent pixels and the rubbing direction of an alignment film, and disclination of the alignment of the liquid crystal molecules occurs in an area in part. The disclination needs to be eliminated since it causes various display failures such as image lag, blurring, reduction in a contrast ratio and the like when an image is displayed.
Use of a light-shielding film or the like to block the light on a portion where the disclination occurs is the most dependable method, but a problem arises in that an area of an opening portion which contributes to the display is reduced as the light-shielding film is extended. Rubbing a pixel polarity in a direction in which no disclination occurs, applying a line-inversion drive scheme, and other methods for dealing with this problem are well known.
Recently, a display device has required a number of signal lines in accordance with the increase in pixels. For this reason, the display device has a problem that the energy consumption is increased.